Dugway Proving Ground covers 798,214 acres: an area approximately the size of Rhode Island. It is the Army’s largest land mass facility, and thus is an ideal environment to be the Defense Department’s leader in chemical and biological defensive testing, environmental characterization, and remediation technology testing. Such tests evaluate the reliability and survivability of all types of military equipment in a chemical or biological environment.

Life Sciences Division – Mission

To design, perform, and report results of biological defense testing in support of the West Desert Test Center (WDTC) mission

To safely test our warfighters future equipment to the highest standards within cost and schedule.

Testing is performed in the field with biosimulant aerosol challenge materials.

Additionally, the division provides materials and a staff of scientists as expert support for testing at Dugway Proving Ground (DPG), as well as biological defense worldwide.

Aerosol Technology Branch – Functions

Acts as the aerosol center of expertise for Dugway Test Activity, maintaining expertise in the areas of aerobiology, aerosol instrumentation, characterization, dissemination and calibration and aerosol physics.

Is responsible for the management and operation of outdoor field trials utilizing biological simulants.

Prepares test chambers and support equipment for simulant and pathogen aerosol testing. Responsible for the characterization (particle size and concentration) of aerosols utilized for testing to include the operation of test fixtures and aerosol generation and sampling equipment.

Carol Ezzell wrote in Nature (1988) …

Yielding to pressure from local residents and anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin, the US army last week announced that it will drop its plans to build a high-containment weapons laboratory at its Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

Instead the army intends to construct a less sophisticated facility that would not be suitable for testing the microbes which most worry opponents: genetically engineered microbes and those which cause incurable diseases.

The army has contended that the tests it plans to conduct at the Dugway facility do not require the highest containment level (biosafety level 4), but that it would prefer to build such a facility in case its needs change, and as an added degree of safety.

It played down the option of building a lower-containment biosafety level 3 laboratory on these grounds in the environmental impact statement on its biological defence activities. That impact statement was produced as a result of a lawsuit brought by Rifkin in 1985 (see Nature 331, 647; 1988).

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Leigh Dethman wrote in the Deseret Morning News (5/26/2005) …

Nobody really knows everything that happens at Dugway Proving Ground.

The military base in Utah’s west desert where defenses against deadly biological and chemical weapons are tested is a constant target of rumors and speculation.

But one thing is certain — Dugway’s mission is valuable to the Department of Defense.

The facility received top rankings from the Pentagon in a report released to the Base Realignment and Closure commission.

LMW COMMENT …

It has been amply demonstrated on this blog that the FBI’s publicly revealed case against Dr. Bruce Ivins is bogus.

Let’s assume for the moment that the FBI does not have more evidence to prove that Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Let’s further assume that, after the largest investigation in its history, the FBI has in fact solved the case.

This raises the possibility that the FBI knows who did it but they’re not telling.

If so, who is the FBI protecting? And why?

In pursuing answers to these questions, it is perhaps useful to consider … who has been a beneficiary of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the FBI’s failure to solve the case?

A recent post on this blog suggested that the Bush/Cheney decision to invade Iraq was aided in large measure by the clear (and false) message they put out that Saddam Hussein had anthrax and the means to deliver it to the U.S.

Who else has become awash in cash

as a result of the 2001 anthrax attacks?

biodefense and biodefense research are big business

the Biodefense industry …

The major contemporary bioterrorist event which has opened up programs of research and development in pharmaceutical countermeasures and treatments was the anthrax mail attacks which occurred in October 2001.

Since then the biodefense industry has grown massively, with the US releasing around $50 billion in biodefence funding in 2001-2009.

In the years since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, killing five people, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs.

Forbes 2010 … The government has spent $5.6 billion during the last six years under one program, HHS’s Project BioShield. The FY2011 budget calls for $6.48 billion in bio-defense spending across many agencies.

I don’t claim to know who committed the 2001 anthrax attacks. But I have written a novel which tells a story that many readers, including a highly respected member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, say is “quite plausible.”